This is a blog by the scientists involved with the US National Science Foundation (NSF-ATM) Sponsored Greenland Halogen and Hydrogen Radical Photochemistry Experiment during the Summer of 2007. Another name for this study is SHOX for the Summit Halogen HOX experiment.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Flat Earth

Since most of my Hg measurements have been behaving, I've been helping out thestaff a bit in their duties. This is Sarah and I, sitting atop the pit 5 of us have been cutting out with chainsaws. It's going to be a food freezer for the next 5 years or so. The sagging ceiling on the current one is making enough people nervous that it's time for a new one.

I helped set up the reflector side of a retro (active long range spectrum-analyzer) in the clean air zone a few days ago, which is an extremely restricted area. As you can see, the place really is this flat. This is a photo of the summit station from 5 km away. The neatest thing is there are snow formations (mainly just waves, hardly even sastrugi), though they are never even 10 cm high. Also there are random patches of harder snow or softer snow, for no obvious reason.

In general the temps have been warming up, though earlier this week we did hit -40 C... Tuesday night I believe. However, with the increasing solar radiation the place seems quite warm. -20 C is a rather average temperature outside, and if I'm doing any manual labor I typically remove my jacket about there. Just adapting I suppose.

Steve Brooks left Summit yesterday. He's now in Kanger, Greenland, slowly making his way back to the states.

We did get an additional 16 ppl at camp yesterday, putting us up to a whopping 48, though 12 or so are leaving tomorrow. Quick visit.

Most things are pretty mellow and cruisy at this point. I did discover that we have a freakin sauna here last night, which is wonderful. Though it was roughly a 170 F difference from inside to outside (roughly 145 F inside when I left, and about -25 F or - 30 F outside).

The 24 hr daylight doesn't seem to be strange any more, more just a fact of life. Walking around camp at 3 am to go to an outhouse with the sun up just seems normal, though it's easy to tell it's still the middle of the morning by the angle. Difficult to take dramatic photos here.

Okay, time to go jump back in the sauna now that all of my daily duties are done.